


Better or Worse?

by LerxstInSpace



Series: Contingency Plan-verse Good++ Ending [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Headaches & Migraines, Multi, Polyamory, Shiro with glasses, mild hurt heavy comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-07 11:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21215963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LerxstInSpace/pseuds/LerxstInSpace
Summary: “You were squinting at the menu when we went out the other night,” Curtis says.“No I wasn’t!”“Smells like burning pants in here,” Adam counters. “I saw you doing it too.”"My eyes are fine!"





	Better or Worse?

**Author's Note:**

> Introducing: Shiro's glasses and my favorite poly trope: two parties ganging up on the third to badger him into taking care of himself.

Adam knows Takashi is okay.

He knows the disease that almost killed Takashi and wrought so much havoc on their lives and their relationship is gone and it’s not coming back. He knows the doctors can’t even tell Takashi was ever sick. He knows Takashi is okay and they never have to worry about this again. 

Knowing doesn’t make it any less of a punch in the gut when Adam comes home from the gym one evening and sees Takashi lying on the couch fighting off a headache.

The living room lights are off, but the TV is providing more than enough illumination for Adam to see Takashi stretched out on the couch in his pajama pants and a loose black T-shirt, the kind he wears to cover his shoulder and dull the glare when he’s having trouble sleeping. His flesh-and-blood forearm is draped across his eyes to block out the light. His water bottle, the one that usually sits on the nightstand, is on the end table next to a bottle of over-the-counter pain pills. That’s the detail that Adam has to focus on right now--the friendly little white bottle of perfectly normal drugstore shit, not that orange prescription bottle of the weapons-grade painkillers Takashi used to need for his migraines. That’s the lifeline he has to hang on to.

Adam opens his mouth, not sure what’s going to come out of it. Nothing does. He drops his gym bag on the floor and takes the two big steps that will bring him right to the couch, to Takashi’s side, but before he can say anything, before he can do anything else, the universe throws him two more lifelines.

First, Curtis looks up from the pot he’s stirring and flashes a little smile, and either Adam is doing a passable job of keeping the rising panic off his face or Curtis just can’t see it from the brightly lit kitchen. “Hey, babe,” he says. “You okay with curry rice for dinner?” Curry rice. Takashi’s favorite comfort food. If Curtis is making it, clearly Takashi has enough of an appetite to eat it. And the casual way he greets Adam doesn’t indicate a significant degree of worry about their husband’s current state.

And second, Takashi makes a little questioning noise and _ sits up. _

He never did that when he was fighting one of his migraines. He _ couldn’t _do that when he was fighting one of his migraines. Between the headache itself and the meds, he could barely move until the damn thing started to back off, and sometimes that took two or three days.

He looks like he’s not feeling great right now, sure. But there’s color in his face, and his eyes are clear (if maybe a little squinty against the lights from the kitchen and the TV), and he’s _ here. _He’s awake. He knows where he is. He knows Adam is here.

“Hey. You okay?” he asks, and Adam feels a pang of guilt over Takashi asking _ him _ that right now. He sounds a little drowsy, but even those three short words seem perfectly coherent. No slurring, no word salad. “What’s wrong? What happened--” And then understanding crosses his face. “Oh. No. No, no, it’s not--aw, Adam. Come here.” He sits up the rest of the way and gently pulls Adam down onto the couch with him. Adam’s knees are already a little wobbly and he does not so much sit down as fall down, and Takashi wraps his arms around him and holds him tight. “I don’t get those anymore. It’s just--” Takashi laughs softly. “It’s just a headache. Just a plain old normal headache. _ I’m okay, baby.” _

Just a headache.

Just a plain old normal headache. 

Adam lets out a shaky breath into Takashi’s shoulder. He’s okay. He’s not sick anymore. It’s not going to come back. _ He’s okay, dammit. _He feels warmth on his back and realizes that Curtis has dropped what he’s doing and come in to squish him from that side too. 

“I’m sorry,” Curtis says gently, leaning his head against Adam’s. “If I’d known it was going to hit you like this I would have texted you or something--”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Little by little, Adam wrestles that rising panic back into submission. “I, uh. I feel kinda dumb now.”

“Don’t.” Takashi kisses the side of his head. “I know this probably dragged up some really bad stuff. Don’t feel bad about that.”

Takashi snuggles him close, and Curtis rubs his back, and it’s okay. Takashi is okay. Everything is okay. And Adam eventually manages to tell himself that enough times to convince whatever part of his brain it is that’s mashing the panic button to stop. 

Curtis gets up, kisses the top of Adam’s head, and leans over to kiss Takashi’s forehead too. “Need anything, babe?”

“Nah, I’m good for now.” Takashi reaches up to squeeze Curtis’ shoulder, and Curtis pats his hand and then goes back to the kitchen to finish up dinner. 

“You need me to help in there?” Adam asks, and Curtis just waves a hand.

“No, the hands-on stuff is just about done. You two just chill out and cuddle.”

“‘Kay.” Adam scoots down to the end of the couch and pats his thigh, a little familiar gesture that doesn’t need a translation. Takashi laughs and settles back with his head in Adam’s lap, and he lets out a contented purring noise when the pads of Adam’s thumbs rub little slow circles over his forehead and temples.

“Is that helping?” Adam asks softly.

“Mhm.” Takashi shuts his eyes and smiles a little. “Helping a lot.”

And that puts Adam at ease. This isn’t the first time he’s done this. Sometimes on the tail end of one of those killer migraines Takashi would lay his head in Adam’s lap just like this, and Adam would try his best to soothe it away. It never worked. If it’s working now... well, if it’s working now, then Takashi really is okay. 

Adam leans down to kiss his forehead. “Headaches still suck, though.”

“It’s not that bad.” Takashi leans into Adam’s petting fingers and sighs. “I can still function. ‘S more annoying than anything. And I just took some stuff right before you got home, it ought to kick in any time now.” 

“Okay.” It _ is _ okay. Everything is okay. Everything... except for one little detail nagging at the back of Adam’s mind. “But you’re lying here in the dark,” he says. “So... the light still makes it worse?”

“Well...” Takashi shrugs and makes a little face. “It’s not so much the light making it worse as... y’know, resting my eyes helps.”

_ Resting his eyes helps, _Adam’s brain repeats. 

That also sounds familiar, and a lot like a symptom of a bigger problem. One much more benign than the source of those damn migraines, and one Adam himself has personal experience with. He shoots Curtis a pointed look. Curtis catches it and grimaces a little as he starts the rice cooker up. 

_ Good luck, _that little grimace says. 

Well. It seems Curtis and Takashi have had this conversation, or one like it, before. And it seems it didn’t go the way Curtis hoped it would.

“So,” Adam goes on, trying to sound casual as he runs his fingers through Takashi’s hair, letting his fingernails scritch lightly across his scalp, “do you get these often, or no?”

“Meh,” Takashi replies, waving a hand. “Once in a--_ hnng keep doing that-- _once in a while.”

Adam keeps doing that. While he does, he looks up again and sees Curtis nodding. Okay, he’s being honest about that much, at least. “Is there a pattern to them? Like... too much caffeine, not enough caffeine, how much you slept--”

“Mmm... no, none of that, I don’t think.”

“And you had a decent lunch so it can’t be that... did you maybe spend a little too much time staring at a screen today?”

There’s a soft choking noise from the kitchen, like Curtis is biting down hard on some words to keep them in his mouth. Takashi doesn’t seem to notice, and he shrugs again. “I don’t know? ...yeah, maybe I did.”

“Uh _ huh,” _Adam says. “Does anything make it worse? Like, say...” He glances up at Curtis. “Trying to read small print?” Curtis meets that glance, eyebrows raised, one fist pressed firmly to his mouth, and he nods emphatically.

“I guess it kind of--uh--” Adam can hear it in his voice. Oh yes. Takashi knows where Adam is going with this, he and Curtis _ have _had this conversation before, and now it’s dawning on him that he’s outnumbered. “I-I mean, it’s not--okay, no, not this again!”

“You’re going to have to tell him,” Curtis says from the kitchen. “He won’t listen to me. _ You’ve been there.” _

Adam taps Takashi on the forehead with a fingertip. “Get your eyes checked,” he says firmly.

“Oh, come on! No! I don’t need--”

“You were squinting at the menu when we went out the other night,” Curtis says. 

“No I wasn’t!”

“Smells like burning pants in here,” Adam counters. “I saw you doing it too.”

“And you’ve _ been _doing that,” Curtis adds. “For like... the last year or so?”

Adam kind of wishes he had a floaty arm like Takashi’s so he could high-five Curtis without having to remove Takashi’s head from his lap. “That,” he starts, giving Takashi another gentle tap right between his eyes, “is an eyestrain headache. I know, because _ I used to get them. _I got them when I was a kid. I got them on Haven. Guess what fixed them. Go on.”

“My eyes are fine!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, you didn’t win the new car, the trip to Hawaii, or the year’s supply of Charmin. The correct answers are: glasses when I was ten, and eye lasers on the way back to Earth.”

_ “I don’t need glasses!” _

  
“Okay.” Adam unholsters his phone and pulls up the local news. He holds it at what should be a comfortable reading distance from Takashi’s face and points at a column of text. “Read that. Out loud.”

Takashi rolls his eyes. “‘Platt City High School Renov--’”

“Not the headline, smartass.” Adam taps the column of text below it and pointedly does _ not _ look at Curtis, because if he does, if he gets an eyeful of Curtis hunched over the island with his hand clamped over his mouth trying to hold his laughter in, _ he’s _ going to crack up and if he starts laughing, Takashi is going to blow this whole conversation off. _“That.” _

Takashi huffs out an indignant sigh. “‘Platt City school board members, city council, and... and, uh...” He squints at the phone. “...aluminum? _ Alumni _ gathered at the nearly--uh, _ newly _renovated--’”

“Do you need me to bump up the font size?”

“No_, _ I don’t need you to bump up the font size! Where was I? ‘...the newly renovated Platt City High gum--_gym _to...’” He scowls at the phone like it’s deliberately taunting him, squinches his eyes shut, and shakes his head. "Dammit. Okay. _ Okay. _I’ll go tomorrow,” he sighs, and Adam grins and reaches behind him to drop his phone on the end table.

“Babe, you know I don’t say ‘I told you so,’” Curtis says from the kitchen, wiping tears of laughter and maybe a little bit of vindication from his eyes with the corner of the dish towel. “But--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Takashi grumbles. “Go ahead. Get it out of your system, both of you.”

“Aww.” Adam laughs and goes back to massaging his head. “Hey. Maybe you just need readers.”

* * *

Takashi is late enough getting home the next day that Adam knows he does definitely does not just need readers. Getting an eye exam and cruising by the drugstore for a pair of cheaters doesn’t take that long. Getting an eye exam and then waiting for a pair of prescription glasses to be fabricated does.

When Takashi finally comes in the door, he isn’t wearing glasses. Curtis seems a little surprised. Adam isn’t. He knows this drill. And there’s a look on Takashi’s face that says, in no uncertain terms: _ I don’t want to hear it. _Adam has a pretty good idea what he doesn't want to hear.

“Well?” he prompts. “How’d it go?” Curtis hangs over his shoulder to see what happens.

And sure enough, Takashi just sighs and reaches into his hip pocket and pulls out a small case, the kind of case Adam knows all too well but, thanks to the magic of eye lasers, no longer needs. “Doc said not to try and drive with them yet,” he grumbles, and he opens up that case and--

Oh.

Oh, crap.

Oh holy _ crap, _ this is a development that Adam absolutely did not expect. He should have, he thinks, now that he’s seeing it; how could he have possibly not anticipated this!? The little breathy squeaky noise Curtis makes seconds that.

“Go ahead,” Takashi deadpans. “Tell me I look like a dork.”

“Um,” Curtis stammers. _ “No?” _

“You, uh.” Adam clears his throat and tries to follow that with something intelligent. That would require him to be able to think about something, _ anything, _ other than him and Curtis dragging Takashi off to the bedroom and tearing every single solitary stitch of clothing off him (except, of course, those glasses). _Hot, _ he tries to say. All that comes out is an airy little “hhh.”

Takashi blinks back at them, looking back and forth from one husband to the other. It’s clear that whatever reaction he was expecting, this wasn’t it. And as that reaction begins to sink in a little crooked grin creeps across Takashi’s face, one that sends a wave of tingly heat coursing through Adam’s insides and makes Curtis tighten his grip on Adam’s shoulder until it’s just short of painful. 

“So,” Takashi starts, “they look okay? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

There’s really only one way Adam or Curtis can answer that.

* * *

“Well, _ shit,” _ Takashi laughs later, as they’re all catching their breath in a tangle of arms and legs and sheets and towels, with the comforter kicked off onto the floor and clothing and pillows strewn all over the bedroom, “I would have gone a long time ago if I knew _ this _was gonna happen.”

Curtis just whimpers into Takashi’s shoulder. Adam reaches up, straightens Takashi’s glasses, and flops back down against his side.

It’s probably a good thing he got the fancy unbreakable ones.


End file.
